Collapsed Australian hedge fund Basis Capital Management will have its day in court against Goldman Sachs.

A New York state judge rejected Goldman's latest attempt to get out from under the $1 billion lawsuit. Basis has accused Goldman of misleading it about the quality of the assets in two collateralized debt obligations, Point Pleasant and Timberwolf. The hedge fund, which had invested US$100 million in Timberwolf and lost more than half of it, pushing it into bankruptcy five years ago, has cited an e-mail in which a Goldman executive referred to Timberwolf as "one shitty deal."

Basis filed a state claim against Goldman last year, after a federal judge dismissed a similar suit. Last week, New York Supreme Court Judge Shirley Werner Kornreich allowed Basis' fraud, negligent misrepresentation, unjust enrichment and recession claims to stand, while dismissing claims of breach of contract and breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

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We are accustomed to splitting trading into technical and fundamental buckets. Both involve crunching data; one set includes market fundamentals and the other pure price data. Alternative data is a third bucket that is gaining traction.